French Parnassus

17th & 18th-Century history, arts & music

9/22/2010

Bellérophon

Lully's opera Bellérophon was revived this year in the occasion of the Festival de Beaune. It had been created in 1679 in Paris (Palais Royal) and hadn't been performed since the XVIIIth century.Some audio samples of the opera (the prologue and the beginning of the second act) are on display here (at the end of the article).

Althought it was not Lully's first opera, it was the first of Lully's opera scores to be printed.A copy of the original edition by Christophe Ballard can be found at the UNT Digital library.(The UNT Digital Library is a great ressource for anyone interested in the history of music).

Quantova

In the years 1673/1674, Madame de Sévigné's and her friends started to refer to Madame de Montespan as "Quantova" or "Quanto".Why such a nickname and what was the meaning of it ?

In that time, the snobish must among the French elite was to read and speak Italian, and the nickname was referring to the quote Madame de Sévigné once (a few years later) wrote in its entirety : "La Pedina del Re quanto va".

Pedina and Re belong to the Italian chess vocabulary, and they appear in a Italian proverb which says "Alla fin del gioco tanto va nel sacco il re quanto la pedina" which translates "After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box". Doubtlessly, that was the origin of the quote, but when the proverb was referring to death, madame de Sévigné was playing with the other meaning of "pedina".In Italian, "pedina" means "pawn" but it was also the word used for an illegitimate wife. In that light, the "king and pedina in the same box at the end" had a very different meaning.

So, "Quantova" was a private joke on Madame de Montespan being the king's mistress and on how long she would be able to hold the position.